Oh, I hate for Cissy to pass away!What a wonderful girl and friend she was.

Artistic, fun with a great sense of humor, pretty, a fine artist, a great conversationalist, an iconoclast, intelligent, lively and thoughtful, Cissy was a great person.She loved her friends, and was a friend to many.In times of trouble, Cissy was a steady shoulder to lean on and was always willing to listen.I will miss her so much.

I join each of you in the admiring comments you have for Cissy.

For our AHHS friends who did not know Cissy well, I would like to talk about Cissy’s life.Cissy's early life was blessed.Her Mother and Father, Chris and Lib Wilhelmy, adored her, their youngest child.Her two big brothers, Bruce and John, always loved her and gave her her nickname, "Cissy". Cissy had horses, which she loved, ponies and rabbits.She had a playhouse where all of us kids would play.Their family traveled widely, and Cissy got to see a lot of the world.Cissy’s first marriage produced two fine girls, Liza and Katie, of whom Cissy was very proud.(Liza now lives in Colorado, and Katie in San Antonio.)Then, Cissy met the love of her life, Dr. Bud Urrutia.Cissy and Bud had a close, happy marriage for 33 years.Cissy and Bud were devoted to each other.As one would expect, Bud is now bereft.

Probably the greatest hardship in Cissy's life was the fact that she had diabetes from the age of 3.Cissy faced this disadvantage as if it were nothing.She rarely talked about it.Probably the diabetes was the underlying condition that compromised her ability to fight the blood cancer, Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia , a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, that befell her.Faced with any physical illness, however, Cissy was a fighter.

Cissy had so many friends in our high school class.Cissy loved her friends, and stayed in touch with them as long as she could.

Bud recently said of Cissy, "Behind that little spitfire girl, there was a really kind person."And, that is the truth.

Even though I and many are sad, Cissy would not want us to be sad, but rather she would want us to celebrate her life.

It has been very hard for me to get myself to write this farewell to Mr. Swinny. What a great man he was! The best way for me to get through this is to say that this is a "goodbye for now" and "see you later." Mr. Swinny's force, the strength of his values and his ideas are too important and continuous to say goodbye to.

I join in all of my classmates comments: Mr. Swinny was a great man, a great leader and and an extraordinary teacher. Mr. Swinny had such an influence on many of my classmates and on me. I remember cringing on stage (from my own unrelated fear) during the Christmas pageants when he would be the voice of God. I remember all through those years that it was perfectly reasonable to me that he was the voice of God. To me, he was a huge persona and he put the fear of God in me.

When I was a freshman, I believe, I took speech class from Mr. Swinny. He would get us up on our feet to speak to the class almost every week. The chairs were all lined up around the class room, and one wall was of windows. I was so shy and so nervous that I could barely talk. He said to me one time..."Nancy, you are going to have to get over this." He was absolutely right, and it took me years to be able to accomplish what he wanted. This is only a small part of what he was trying to teach us, but he was trying to teach us the importance of being able to speak and to speak meaningfully about things and ideas. He sort of reached down and raised us up, to be better than we were.

Most of all, of course, I remember the senior play. Mr. Swinny inspired us, drove us, lectured us and led us to bring the most out of ourselves, and to present a fun, exciting and joyous musical, Bye Bye Birdie. It was so much fun. The rehearsals were fun. I remember singing songs during a rehearsal at night (and for the rehearsals, I was allowed out on a school night) sitting at the piano with some of you, and it was so much fun. What a high! Mr. Swinny taught us to do a dance step where we would sort of leap across the stage. I have done it (secretly) for years afterward! Do you remember that Mr. Swinny made us arrive at the theater about 2 hours before the show started so that we could "get in character" and be ready to perform when the time came? He made all of us love the chance to be in that play and to be absolutely serious about it. It was remarkable. He brought us all together, to work together and to make something that was a vision in his mind and that was for fun but that he was so serious about. As a result, we were serious about it too. Being in our senior play was probably the single most fun thing for me in high school, but it was also an important part of my life. I wished that it could go on forever.

Mr. Swinny, you will go on forever. You gave us something big, valuable and important. Thank you so much.